Foale Increment: Collision and Recovery

STS-84 launched on May 15, 1997 with crew member Mike Foale. He replaced Mir
astronaut John Blaha and spent a total of 134 days in orbit. Foale returned to Earth with STS-86, on October 6, 1997. Foale's mission proceeded fairly normally
until June 25, when during a test of a manual docking system, a Progress resupply
ship collided with Mir's Spektr module, causing a depressurization of the space
station. The crew closed the hatch to Spektr, which stabilized the station's
air pressure, while Spektr's pressure dropped to a vacuum. The collision knocked
Mir into a spin, at a rate of about once every six minutes, but the crew members
were able to stabilize the station. Many of Foale's experiments and personal
effects were isolated within Spektr. Fortunately, food, water and other vital
Mir supplies were stored in other modules.

In August, Foale's Mir-23 crewmates, Vasily Tsibliev and Aleksandr Lazutkin,
were replaced by Mir-24's Anatoly Solovyev and Pavel Vinogradov, who arrived
in a Soyuz vehicle. Later in the mission, Foale and Solovyev conducted a 6-hour
EVA to inspect the damage to the punctured Spektr.

During his mission, Foale performed science experiments in various disciplines,
including biology, human life sciences, Earth sciences, and advanced technology.

In his Oral History, Foale says that, shortly after the collision, "It crossed
my mind, 'You know, I've been here six weeks and I think we're going to be going
home right now.' I was actually kind of sad. I thought, 'Well, you know, that's
a shame. I won't finish this whole thing. I had set out here to be four and
a half months, and now it's going to get cut short. This is a real emergency.'
And we had all the danger of getting out of there, but it was crossing my mind,
'This is a shame. I've only been here six and a half weeks. What a shame I'm
not getting to do the whole thing.'

"Then it occurred to me, 'Well, you know, you'll get to see your kids and [your
wife] Rhonda sooner.' And I thought, 'Oh, but we're going to be landing in Kazakhstan.
That's going to be a delay.' The thoughts that went through my mind, it was
exactly like that. I thought, 'You'd better focus on getting this sealed off
here.' That's what went through my mind."

The residency of an American astronaut aboard the Russian space station continued
with NASA Astronaut David Wolf.